A proposal: the Civilian Oversight Service.

[TheWraith]

This is an idea I've been batting around in my head for awhile. It occurs to me that what we really need in this country is effective oversight of government agencies. Congress can't do it because even if every committee is 100% honest, they just can't be out there running this stuff down. And the various agencies can't be relied on to police themselves adequately at all times.

So here's my idea: a new government agency, to be called the Civilian Oversight Service. COS agents would be empowered to inspect the whole of the government: go anywhere, see anything, talk to anyone, without impediment. No part of any government or military agency or facility would be off-limits. Nothing would be too classified. Their jobs would be to find and expose graft, corruption, waste, lying, lawbreaking, persecution, and wrongdoing of all kinds within the government and the military--particularly the things that couldn't be rooted out by the appropriate investigative agency. To lie to, or withold information from, a COS agent would be a crime in and of itself, like lying to any other federal agent.

The COS would be run by career staffers, not political appointees. They would have an organized investigation wing, as well as roving agents whose job it was to simply drop in somewhere unannounced. Reports and conclusions would be public, except in cases where the COS determined that security or privacy would be jeopardized. Advancement would be based on success, like a police department's Internal Affairs group.

If we already had a COS, they could have warned us that the evidence on Iraq was weak. They could tell us how many innocent people had their privacy invaded by the NSA, and whether they found any actual suspects. They could expose the truth about torture, about illegal operations in other countries, no-bid contracts, and a host of other things that are going wrong. Besides the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that would be saved, just imagine the amount of corruption--both financial and ethical--that goes on on a day to day basis, being eradicated. What say you all?